Bad Company (Mustang Sally Mysteries) [Mass Market Paperback]

Virginia Swift (Author)

Book Description

Series: Mustang Sally Mysteries | Publication Date: June 24, 2003

Bar singer-turned-college professor Sally Alder knew supermarket checkout girl Monette Bandy from barbeques at the girl's aunt and uncle's place. But she never dreamed she'd be stumbling over Monette's battered corpse high up in the scenic Devil's Playground. Now it seems Sally's the only person in Laramie, Wyoming, who gives a hoot about the brutal slaying of an overweight, oversexed honky-tonk angel with a taste for the very worst specimens of the male animal. Somewhere in the drunken chaos of Laramie's Jubilee Days festival, a week of rodeo and revelry, a murderer lurks. As she digs into Monette's shady escapades, Sally discovers that hunting a killer in the midst of the biggest party of the year could prove a lot tougher, and more deadly, than she ever imagined.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Following a well-received debut (2000's Brown-Eyed Girl), the new adventure featuring "Mustang" Sally Adler (for the car, not the horse) and the living jewel called Wyoming is another delectable tale of strong women of the West. Swift gives readers a lot to like: wicked satire of pompous academics, smart but not smart-alecky writing, the achingly beautiful landscape of the eastern Rockies, great sex between grownups old enough to know what they're doing and why and most of all, the dead-on portrayal of a Western town, in this case Laramie, Wyo. (pop. 27,000). A history professor at the University of New Mexico, Swift clearly knows how Westerners act and think. When the going gets tough, they "cowboy up." They say to the government, "Just give me the check and get the hell out." Their idea of fancy Saturday night garb is dress jeans and cowboy boots. They work phrases from country songs into their everyday conversation, and name their children after country singers. When Sally's best friend marries a rodeo rider named Walker Davis, what else would they call their son but Jerry Jeff Walker Davis? The core plot is not complex, but it feels real. Two main threads the rape and murder of a young woman who's no one's candidate for the girl next door and a land swap deal that stinks of greed and corruption even before toxic groundwater is discovered are resolved in a way that poignantly reminds us that sometimes morality has murky edges. All told, this is a refreshing piece of work by a strong new talent.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

After language arts teacher Margo Brown (Why Johnny Died) and her husband discover an old gun buried in their garden, Margo cannot resist investigating. Working with clues from her husband and his ninetyish father, who remembers the 50-year-old unsolved shooting of a local landowner, plus research results from the library and reminiscences from the victim's relatives, Margo manages to ruffle some important feathers. This intriguing puzzle is fleshed out with bucolic details of cooking, gardening, yard work, and gossip in rural Indiana. A pleasant read; for regional and larger mystery collections.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Avon (June 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061030295
• ISBN-13: 978-0061030291
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,608,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars exciting amateur sleuth, June 9, 2002

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bad Company: A Mustang Sally Mystery (Hardcover)

It is Jubilee Days in Laramie, Wyoming and the town is filling up with tourists, cowboys and parties interested in the upcoming rodeo circuits. University of Wyoming history professor Sally Adler and her life partner geology professor Hawk Green want a respite from the crowds so they go hiking in the hills where they find the body of Manette, a cashier at the local supermarket.

She was beaten, raped and shot to death and with the town so crowded with revelers, the sheriff isn't sure if he can solve the case before the Jubilee days come to a close. To complicate matters, twenty one year old Manette was a woman on the prowl, looking for somebody to fill up her night and she wasn't very particular about who it was as long it was male. Sally, a curious mix of sixties liberalism and new millennium pragmatism wants the killer caught and sets out to investigating on her own, making a target of herself along the way.

Readers who like a raunchy, realistically drawn down home heroine will adore the star of BAD COMPANY. The story line moves faster than a running river, taking readers on a ride that is filled with thrills, chills and action. Virginia Swift is a relative newcomer to the mystery genre but with a novel and series like this, she has a bright future ahead of her.

Harriet Klausner

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent, Originial Mystery, August 17, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Bad Company: A Mustang Sally Mystery (Hardcover)

I've read both of the Mustang Sally mysteries this week and it just kills me that I'll have wait a year for the next one to be published. I think that, like Nevada Barr, Virginia Swift is headed for the bestseller lists.
The characters, the setting, and the plot are all complex and interesting yet witty and romantic. It's often said that mystery readers are usually smart people, but it's still a pleasure to read a book that is both completely entertaining and beautifully written. Enjoy!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars comedy of manners, July 12, 2002

By 

Arnold Kling (Silver Spring, Md USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bad Company: A Mustang Sally Mystery (Hardcover)

Academic/feminist/singer/sleuth Sally Alder and her companion Hawk Green become involved in two mysteries, one involving a nasty murder and the other involving a questionable land swap. The setting is Laramie, Wyoming, during the crowded, raucous Jubilee Days.

Compared with her first novel, "Brown-eyed Girl," the writing here is more compact. Where "Brown-eyed Girl" was replete with two-page digressions, in "Bad Company" Swift is more apt to toss of a one-liner.

Still, I would recommend reading "Brown-eyed Girl" before "Bad Company." You get a fuller background of the characters, particularly Hawk, who was more richly drawn in the first book. He's rather uninteresting here. In fact, there are points in "Bad Company" where Alder seems to be more intrigued by Scotty Atkins, a detective who is assigned to the murder.

The New York Times accurately describes Swift's writing as a comedy of manners. The plot is merely a scaffolding on which to hang Swift's many observations about the variety of the human species. To enjoy the novel, you have to be amused by incidents such as a nerdy academic slinging post-modernism in a Western saloon.